The Chronicle’s annual list of the largest charitable donations from individuals or their foundations totaled nearly $6 billion in 2024, half of which came from three contributions of $1 billion or more each. Two of those three gifts went to medical schools to provide financial assistance. In total, four of the top donations on the list, totaling $2.3 billion, went to financial aid.
Three contributions were made to the donors’ own foundations, and those gifts also totaled $2.3 billion. Three other donations supported medical research or treatments, and one gift each went to social engagement and arts and culture.
The list includes 12 gifts, instead of 10 due to ties. Six of the donors are multi-billionaires and their combined net worth is estimated at $365 billion.
Topping the list is a gift from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, whose net worth Forbes estimates at more than $5 billion. Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, donated 2 million shares of Netflix stock, worth $1.1 billion, to their Hastings Fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in January.
The couple started their fund in 2016 and have primarily supported educational organizations, with a special focus for Hastings, who taught high school math while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s and as chairman of the California State Board in the early 2000s ofEducation. .
Hastings co-founded the video streaming platform in 1995 as a DVD subscription service. It started streaming movies and television series in 2007 and later started creating its own content. He stepped down as co-CEO last year and is currently chairman of the company.
Medical school aid
Next on the list is the $1 billion that Michael Bloomberg donated to Johns Hopkins University through his Bloomberg Philanthropies to make medical education free for most students and to provide more financial aid to the university’s nursing and public health students .
Bloomberg, whose net worth is about $105 billion, according to Forbes, earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from college in 1964. He subsequently founded the Bloomberg financial news empire and served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013. considering his alma mater, at least $3.5 billion since he graduated sixty years ago.
Ruth Gottesman, professor emeritus in the department of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, had the same goal as Bloomberg. She gave her former employer $1 billion in February to support perpetual free education for students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Gottesman had a long career in medical school. She joined the university’s Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center in 1968 and started the center’s adult literacy program in the early 1990s. She was later named founding director of the Fisher Landau Center for the Treatment of Learning Disabilities.
Her late husband, David Gottesman, ran the New York investment firm First Manhattan and was an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway and a protege of Warren Buffett. He left his valuable stock portfolio to his wife when he died in 2022, with instructions to do with it as she thought best.
Buffett money
Berkshire’s chairman and CEO, Warren Buffett, follows Gottesman and Bloomberg with a major gift of his own. The famed financier in November donated 1.5 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway, worth $716.1 million, to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his first wife, who died in 2004.
Buffett, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $143 billion, founded the grantmaker in 1964 to manage the family’s charitable giving, and it remains a family affair. Two of his three children are on the board, and it is led by his former son-in-law. The foundation primarily supports women’s reproductive health. It also offers scholarships for students in Nebraska, the family’s home state.
The donation is a special contribution that Buffett announced in November, in lieu of one of the annual contributions he makes to the foundation and several other grant makers, which are payments for billions of dollars in commitments he announced in 2006.
The Chronicle’s annual ranking of the year’s largest donations is based on publicly announced gifts. The count does not include contributions of works of art or gifts from anonymous donors. In March, the Chronicle will unveil its annual rankings of the top 50 donors, a list based on philanthropists’ total contributions in 2024 rather than individual gifts.
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THE LIST
1. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his wife Patty Quillin; $1.1 billion to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Hastings Fund
2. (tie) Michael Bloomberg, founder of the Bloomberg financial news empire and former mayor of New York, through his Bloomberg Philanthropies; $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University for financial aid
2. (tie) Ruth Gottesman, professor emerita of the department of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine; $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for financial aid
4. Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; $716.1 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
5. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his wife Patty Quillin; $502.4 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Hastings Fund
6. Roy Vagelos, retired chairman of the pharmaceutical company Merck, and his wife Diana; $400 million to Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons to establish the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Science
7. Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, through her Alice L. Walton Foundation; $350 million to Mercy Health to establish a heart care center
8. Jackie and Mike Bezos, parents of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, through their Bezos Family Foundation; $185.7 million to Aspen Institute to establish the Center for Rising Generations
9. (tie) Barbara Britt, the late widow of Glenn Britt, a former CEO of Time Warner Cable; A $150 million donation to Dartmouth College for financial aid
9. (tie) Hyatt Brown, a retired insurance executive, and his wife Cici; $150 million to the Museum of Arts and Sciences for a new building
9. (tie) Emmet Stephenson Jr., a financier, and his daughter Tessa Stephenson Brand, an event planner; $150 million to City of Hope for pancreatic cancer research
9. (tie) Byron Trott, chairman of the investment bank BDT & MSD Partners, and his wife Tina, through their Trott Family Philanthropies; $150 million to STARS College Network to help graduate students from small and rural towns
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Maria Di Mento is a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article, including the list of donors. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a philanthropy and nonprofit partnership supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
